Day 20 and 23: The British Museum

The British Museum has free admission, so that and its proximity to the hotel meant we split up our visits based on time available.  We saw it our first afternoon in London and came back later in the week to finish up what we’d missed.

The British Museum, ironically, has a lot of stuff in it that isn’t British.  It contains numerous artifacts stretching back across the ages, ranging from the Rosetta Stone to ancient Egyptian statues to prehistoric tools. 

An exhibit on currency displaying the results of hyperinflation.  The bill in the top left corner is a 50 billion Zimbabwean dollar note, issued in May 2008, which was worth $1.22 in June 2008, and $0.06 in July.  The inflation rate that month was about 231,000,000%.	There it is: the Rosetta Stone, containing the same royal decree in hieroglyphics, Demotic text, and ancient Greek, which became the key to the modern world understanding hieroglyphics.  It was inscribed over 2000 years ago, found at Rosetta in 1799 by the French and captured by the British in 1801.

It was interesting to see the English take on the American Revolution:
”The wars and colonial struggles of the eighteenth century caused a massive increase in government expenditure, inspiring a search for new sources of revenue, often from previously privileged classes.  England sought to tax its American colonists on a par with its own citizens, although they were not represented in parliament.  The problems of governing across the Atlantic, the more egalitarian American society and the extremely rapid growth of its settlements all added to the tensions which produced the American War of Independence (1775-83). 

The Americans could not easily appeal to traditional rights and had to take their stand on the revolutionary principle of the natural rights of man.  The success of the revolt showed a people deposing their ruler and creating a republic based on a new social contract.  France had allied with America during the war, but emerged financially exhausted, exacerbating its own social and political tensions.  Ideas of the natural equality of man, pockets of hatred for the traditional ruling classes and the financial and political weakness of the monarchy combined in 1789 to inspire the French Revolution, the greatest challenge the old order of Europe was to face.”

Counterfeit currency produced by the BBC for use in an episode of “Doctor Who.”  Doctor Who is a long-running British science fiction show about a man in a police box that flies through time and space to save the human race.	Model of what Olympia looked like in Ancient Greece, where the Greeks held their Olympic games.  The tall, white, columned building in the center held the statue of Zeus, considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

I definitely recommend the British Museum if you have any interest in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, or Persia.